Joe Ledger: Unstoppable

VACATION BY SCOTT SIGLER

A spectacular sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge, turning the few wisps of fog below it a reddish orange. A view of Alcatraz Island, old and solid and full of legends. And me — just some guy sitting on a park bench at Marina Green with his dog lying down next to him, big white head in my lap.

A perfect moment. I shouldn’t have answered the phone, but old habits die hard. And then there was the fact that calls to this phone were not to be ignored — especially when those calls came from that man.

I had to jostle Ghost a bit to pull the phone out of my pocket. The white German shepherd glanced at me, just to check that everything was okay, then put his head back down on my lap.

I answered.

“Know what, Church? I’m buying you a dictionary.”

“So I can look up what the word vacation means, I assume.”

I hate it when he does that.

“The least you could have done was let me have the fucking punch line.”

“If you want the punch line, Joe, tell better jokes. Don’t worry, this probably won’t take long.”

That’s the thing with Mr. Church. His probably has a completely different definition from what you’d expect. Yes, a dictionary would be the ideal Christmas present.

In my life, perfect moments are rare. Church had interrupted that moment. I breathed deep, slow, petting Ghost’s head. A big head, because he’s a big dog. As in almost fifty kilos big. I’d had him only a few weeks, and we were already bound by blood. He’d taken a bullet that would have killed me. He’d also torn the hand off a human being who’d murdered the love of my life. I’d never been a dog person, but in my mind Ghost wasn’t really a dog—he was a fellow soldier. He was my pack member.

That bullet hurt him, though. An inch-wide streak of shaved fur on his left shoulder surrounded eight stitches dotting a line of pursed flesh. While he recovered, I’d decided to reward his performance with a “sniff all the things you can” tour of San Francisco.

Of course, this trip wasn’t just for Ghost. I needed recovery time, and not the physical kind. The wounds of Grace’s loss were too fresh. Too raw. I wasn’t ready to deal with people. I sure as hell wasn’t ready to go back to work.

“You promised me time off after Veder,” I said.

“Veder. Curious how everyone in the world has lost track of him.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Quite curious.”

I’d buried that assassin on a beach. I pissed on his grave. So did Ghost. The only creatures who would ever see him again were crabs that dug deep to feast on his rotting flesh.

“I need you to track down a lead,” Church said. “Kraken Team was running an op in El Paso. The Mexican cartel seems to be working with some new muscle.”

“And we care, why? The drug business isn’t our business.”

“It is when multiple sightings of that muscle describes them as orcs.”

Most people would have laughed at that. Most people don’t work for the DMS. With the shit I’ve seen, I didn’t second-guess Church, even for an instant.

“Orcs,” I said. “That’s new.”

“Three of them. In gangland circles, they’ve come to be known as Tres Hermanos Orco.”

“The Three Orc Brothers? Fantastic.”

“There are no pictures,” Church said. “No video, just a sketch. The DEA lost two undercover agents to these guys. A survivor of that incident described them, and that filtered back to me. We sent Kraken Team to help out. Found them pretty quickly. There was a firefight. Imura says he landed three shots with an M110 SASS, all center-mass, from a distance of fifty meters. When Kraken Team closed in, there was blood, but no body.”

“Could the other two brothers have carried the dead one out?”

“Spotters saw three big bodies leaving, leaving fast.”

Sam “Ronin” Imura is the best sniper I’ve ever met. If he says he landed three shots center-mass, then that’s a fact. The M110 fired 7.62 × 51 mm rounds—número uno orco should have been hamburger.

“Body armor?”

“Imura didn’t see any, but these were big guys. Easy to assume body armor was involved.”

“So how does this involve me?”

“Blood analysis turned up something funny — a third sex chromosome.”

“Klinefelter syndrome?”

“No, not XXY,” Church said. “Something I’ve never seen before. It’s more like a Z. Here’s where it gets strange. Hu processed the genome. MindReader ran that info through every database you can imagine. It got a hit, but a hit that was erased years ago.”

It wasn’t surprising MindReader could find something that wasn’t supposed to be there anymore. That computer was Church’s creation, a silicon god that seemed to move in and out of the world’s databases like an all-powerful tech phantom.

“MindReader found a mitochondrial DNA match with a Jebediah Erickson, resident of San Francisco. Whatever the Orc Brothers are, their mother is Erickson’s mother.”

“So it’s Quatro Hermanos?”

“Maybe, but Erickson is old. He was in an insane asylum for vigilante murders back in the eighties. That information, too, had been wiped out of multiple databases. If it wasn’t for MindReader, Erickson’s crimes and his time in the asylum wouldn’t exist.”

With the foes the DMS had faced, I knew age was a relative thing.

“You want me to bring Erickson in.”

“Just talk to him,” Church said. “I’d leave this to the locals entirely, but if Erickson is involved, the last thing we want is more good cops dead. See if the guy knows anything about his brothers. Our assets are stretched thin right now. You taking care of this lead saves me the headache of pulling someone off an assignment.”

Were we that maxed out? Maybe. Or maybe Church was giving me a guilt trip for being on vacation. Well, fuck him — I’d earned a few days off. Still, though… a new chromosome, dead DEA agents…

“You think Erickson is dangerous?”

“He’s seventy-three. Although he did win a gold medal in archery in the Pan Am Games, so if he pulls a bow on you…”

That was Church’s idea of a joke.

“And you made fun of my punch lines?”

“Touché. So, can you do this for me?”

I slowly petted Ghost’s head.

“Fine,” I said. “Happy to be a team player, as always.”

“Good. An Inspector Chang is on his way to pick you up at Marina Green.”

“What, here? You called the SFPD and told them I was in before you called to ask me?”

“I had a hunch,” Church said. “If there’s weird shit going down in San Francisco, the mayor said Chang is our guy. Chang is aware of Ghost. I’m getting DMS people out there for this. Gather what info you can and hand it over when they arrive. Let me know if you find anything.”

He hung up.

I sat there, taking in the amazing view, gently petting Ghost. Ghost was loving it, his eyes narrowed both from the light breeze off the bay and from the attention.

“Well, pal, looks like we have to put in some work. You mind?”

Ghost’s eyes widened to their normal, thousand-yard-stare width. He whuffed once and stood, slowly, favoring his wounded leg.

Marina Green was once a landing strip, I’d learned. Long, rectangular, and — obviously—green, it had a parking lot along one side and a footpath on the other, separating it from the water. No more than thirty or forty seconds after the call with Church, I heard the honk of a car horn.

An Asian man wearing a brown sport coat stepped out of a shit-brown Buick. He waved at me. Heavy black hair, about thirty pounds too many.

I walked across the grass to the car, Ghost at my side.

“Howdy do,” the man said in a Chicago accent so thick I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a bratwurst stuffed in his coat pocket. “One giant-sized white canine, check. One badass-looking mofo with all the charm of someone who just had a homeless guy drop a corned-up chocolate dragon in his Cheerios, check. Agent Ledger and Ghost, I assume?”

“And you must be Inspector Chang,” I said, shaking his offered hand.

“Call me Pookie. Everyone does.”

“I’m Joe.”

“Joe, what the fuck happened to your face?”

I’d forgotten about that. Before I killed Veder, he’d done a number on me: blackened left eye, purple bruises on my chin and throat, a knot on my forehead that looked like half a golf ball surgically implanted beneath yellow-purple skin.

“It was just a scuffle.”

“Let me guess,” Chang said. “I should see the other guy.”

I shrugged. “Sure. If anyone ever finds him.”

Chang nodded slowly. “I think I’m done asking questions. Let’s go.”

He opened the passenger door — not to let me in, but to clean up a stack of overstuffed manila folders so old and reused they shed tan dander all over the place. He moved the folders to the floor of the rear seat, then cleared off more of the same to make room in the back for Ghost. Chang held the door open.

“Hop in, pup.”

Ghost didn’t move.

I flicked a finger to the car. Ghost leaped in.

“Nice,” Chang said. “My buddy has a dog. Not quite as well behaved.”

“Yeah, Ghost is a real cream puff. Just do me a favor and keep your hands away from his mouth.”

Chang half laughed, as if I were joking, then realized I wasn’t.

“How about I just avoid getting anywhere near the cuddly little feller?”

I nodded. “That’s probably for the best.”

We drove out of Marina Green, then through tree-lined streets full of three-story buildings, most of which sported San Francisco’s famous three-sided bay window architecture. I’d walked these same streets in the past few days, assuming most apartments held tech rich kids paying at least twice as much for seven hundred square feet as I did for my entire house.

“Chief Robertson told me to help you out,” Chang said. “He said in no uncertain terms that you were some VIP big shot or what have you. I speak politician, so allow me to paraphrase what he said: ‘Chang, if Ledger wants a Flint Crankshaft with a complimentary Rhode Island Reach-Around, then you give him a Flint Crankshaft with a complimentary Rhode Island Reach-Around.’”

Chang talked too much. Every police force has at least a few of him, though. Law enforcement is a difficult, often thankless gig, which means morale is just as important as target practice. Guys like Chang make a shitty job a little less shitty.

“Do I even want to know what a Flint Crankshaft is?”

“Depends,” he said. “You the kind of guy who frequents swinger parties and has a lifetime subscription to Naughty America?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t want to know. On the serious tip — mind telling me why I’m taking you to see Erickson?”

“He’s a person of interest in a case my department is working on.”

“Yeah, about that department. This alphabet soup gets so confusing. PMS? PBS? Say yes to the dress? What was it again?”

I don’t mind a little lightheartedness, but Chang’s flippancy was starting to annoy me.

“DMS,” I said.

“And why interrupt your doggie vacay instead of having one of us follow up on this for you? I’d be happy to take it off your plate. It is my town and all.”

He seemed a little too eager for that solution. Territorial pissing? All too common in police work. Maybe he smelled involvement in a federal case, something that would look good on his annual review.

“Two undercover DEA agents were murdered,” I said. “Erickson might be related to the killers. Listen, I was a cop once. I know playing taxi driver is annoying as hell, so I suggest we get this over with as quickly as possible. Then we’ll all go on our merry way.”

Chang changed lanes for no reason, cutting off a silver Mercedes that honked angrily.

“Asshole,” Chang said. “Roads are full of ’em.”

“Apparently.”

“Listen, Joe-Joe, I can save you some trouble. I’ve talked to Erickson before. He’s nobody. Not worth your time.”

Yes, I had been a cop once, and now those cop instincts rose up like lava under high pressure. The very guy sent to escort me around town was hiding something. My bullshit alarm jumped straight to DEFCON 2.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” I said. “Take me to Erickson’s house, or I go by myself and inform my boss — who apparently knows your boss — that you were less than helpful. Your choice.”

Chang let out a low whistle.

“Well, that adds up, doesn’t it? And you can fuck your math teacher, but you can’t fuck math.”

We drove in silence for the next ten minutes. Maybe that was a mistake on my part, because silence gave me time to think.

Grace was gone. I knew that, accepted it, yet the realization kept hitting me over and over, the pain fresh and abrasive each time. I’d killed the man who had killed her. That hadn’t brought her back, just added one more body to the endless train of death that was my life.

San Francisco is a city with amazing architecture. Ghost and I had spent two days walking the streets and hills, seeing the sights, taking in the views. More Victorian homes than you could shake a stick at. Most of them were long since converted to bed-and-breakfasts or divided up for apartments.

Not so with Jebediah Erickson’s place.

The onetime Pan Am Games gold medalist and institutionalized vigilante killer lived at 2007 Franklin Street, a gray Victorian that sat so close to the three-lane one-way it almost leaned over the road the way a cat leans over a wounded mouse.

Chang pulled into the driveway, parked next to a black Dodge Magnum station wagon. It had gotten dark quickly, but there was enough light for me to see a black-and-white German shorthaired pointer run down the house’s marble steps and put its paws on the Buick’s back door — the dog’s nose was separated from Ghost’s only by the window glass. Both tails wagged furiously.

“Goddammit, Emma, get off my car,” Chang said in the voice of one who knows the dog isn’t going to listen.

“She lives here, Pooks,” said a man walking down the same steps. “She can do what she wants.”

“She doesn’t live in my car, all right?”

The man had pale skin, but everything else was black — hair, work boots, jeans, a black sweatshirt that barely hid the telltale bulge of a handgun. Everything black, save for a three-day growth of red beard. The man had a vibe: the kind of guy who could handle himself in any situation. He instantly reminded me of my DMS squad mates.

“Agent Ledger?” he said.

I nodded. “And you are?”

“Jebediah Erickson.”

Mid-thirties, max, unless I’d somehow stumbled into another Nazi genetics experiment.

“I assume you mean Jebediah Erickson Junior? Or perhaps the third?”

He shook his head.

Make that DEFCON 1.

“You’re in good shape for a seventy-three-year-old man,” I said, shaking the offered hand.

“Benefits of clean living,” Erickson said. “Come in. Bring your dog with if you like.”

Two things dominated my thoughts: one, this was not the real Jebediah Erickson, and two, this guy — like me — was once a cop. When you wear the badge as long as I did, it’s something you just know.

Right off the bat, there was something about him I liked. I had to remind myself he might be involved with the Orc Brothers and the death of DEA agents. Still, there was a calmness about Erickson, the kind you sense only in people who’ve performed well in intense combat.

I leashed Ghost and let him out. Emma immediately went in for the butt sniff, so fast and sudden that Ghost actually scooted away before turning to sniff her. I swear, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen my dog look worried.

“Emma’s overly friendly,” Erickson said. “Come on inside.”

Dogs have a powerful sense of smell, but in a way I do, too — I can smell my own. This “Erickson” was a killer. I just hoped he was one of the good guys.

The house’s interior was just as spectacular as the exterior. Everything looked antique, as if the furniture had been made from a mixture of old money and social status poured into a mold built by long-dead lumber barons. But there were strange things, too: muddy dog prints on couches that cost more than my car; a huge flat-screen TV that looked completely out of place among the decor; textbooks and Seventeen magazines scattered all over. The place smelled faintly of gun oil.

He was clearly rich as hell, and also clearly didn’t give a crap about the stuff in this house.

“Got kids, Mr. Erickson?”

“It’s Jeb,” he said, gesturing to a chair that should have been in a museum. “And no, I don’t. A woman and her two teenage daughters live here. They’ve been through some hard times.”

At this, Chang laughed, a huff of agreement that screamed You can say that again. Another part of this strange story?

I sat. Ghost sat at my feet. Emma rushed in for another butt sniff. I started to warn Ghost to behave, assuming he’d growl, but he just wagged his tail.

“Ghost and Emma sitting in a tree,” Chang said. “Your dog fixed, Joe?”

Honestly, at that time, I didn’t know.

“Emma, come,” Erickson said.

The pointer wasn’t as stoic as Ghost, but when Erickson called her she ran to him and sat, mouth open, tongue lolling, looking up at the man as if he were the greatest thing that had ever lived.

“Agent Ledger, I’m friends with the mayor,” Erickson said. “He called and told me to help you out if I could, but I’m a busy guy. Can we get to the point?”

I gave him the rundown that Church gave me. When I got to the part about the Z chromosome, Chang and Erickson exchanged a glance — they not only knew about it, they thought they were the only ones who did.

I showed Erickson the sketch Church had texted me. An Orc Brother: cammo raincoat over shoulders that could have belonged to an NFL lineman or a gorilla; hunched back; flat, wide nose; beady eyes beneath a heavy brow. Whatever hair it might have had was hidden beneath the raincoat hood. And, yeah, two actual fangs, jutting up from the lower jaw.

“That’s not good,” Erickson said.

Not Oh, give me a break, or Stop wasting my time, just That’s not good. My BS alarm continued to scream — this guy had no problem accepting this as real. Outside of the DMS and the people we’d fought against, I didn’t know anyone who wouldn’t instantly question that sketch.

“So, uh,” Erickson said, “my mom is their mom?”

I nodded. “That’s what I’m told. Of course, I now have my doubts that you were even born by the time the real Jebediah Erickson was institutionalized. Where is he?”

Not-Erickson thought for a moment, then plowed forward, not bothering to lie.

“He’s dead. And no, I didn’t kill him. Agent Ledger, if you—”

“Call me Joe,” I said. “Because that’s my actual name. What’s yours?”

The world narrowed to our locked stare: half battle of wills, half evaluation of the soul. My instincts told me he was good people, but then again, I’d thought the same thing of the man pretending to be an FBI agent who turned out to be the very assassin who’d killed Grace, almost killed Ghost, almost killed me.

Maybe my instincts were on vacation, too.

“Bryan,” the man said.

Chang stood up, instantly agitated. “Bry — Bry… I mean, Jeb, aren’t we going a little fast here?”

Erickson’s—Bryan’s—eyes never left mine.

“Joe, the mayor said your DMS was a big deal. I understand you have a job to do, but there’s more going on in this city than you could know. This is San Francisco — things are different here.”

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.

“Bryan, you have no idea of what we do at the DMS.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Whatever it is, trust me, we’ve seen shit that would make your head spin.”

Like this identity thief had ever seen hybrid gorilla soldiers, wasp-dogs, fucking zombies, and a dragon? I’d faced actual, honest-to-God monsters.

My cell phone rang. More good news from Church. I answered it.

“Ledger here.”

“The Orc Brothers are in San Francisco. MindReader analyzed the combat footage from Kraken Team and nailed an algorithm for the way they walk. The Brothers were spotted in the Presidio — based on your GPS, you’re maybe fifteen blocks from where they are. I’m sending Kraken Team, but their earliest ETA is four hours from now.”

MindReader could identify people from the way they walked now? That machine got spookier every day.

“Send me the GPS location.” With the phone still to my ear, I held out my hand to Chang. “Give me your car keys.”

“Don’t fucking think so,” Chang said.

“Church, say hello to Inspector Chang and tell him it’s in his best interest to give me his car, right now.”

I offered the phone to Chang. He hesitated, then took it.

“This is Inspector Chang.”

To this day, I don’t know what Church said to him. I knew my boss, though, and knew MindReader would instantly cough up every little sin this guy had done, both on the clock and off.

“No shit,” Chang said into the phone. “Um… what if I told you I didn’t know she was married, and that wasn’t even my wheelbarrow?”

A moment of silence, then he hung up. He handed me both the phone and his car keys.

“That guy can fuck your math teacher, then fuck math, then give physics a reach-around and a Chang Bang while he’s at it,” Pookie said. “Try not to wreck my ride.”

His car drove like shit. My cell phone and the map had me to the Presidio in minutes — the wonders of modern technology. The lights of San Francisco quickly faded away, vanishing as I drove into the Presidio. Houses gave way to trees, to a surprising level of darkness. Cloud cover hid stars and moon alike. And, of course, there was fog and plenty of it. I felt more as though I were in the hills of Pennsylvania than in the midst of one of the world’s great cities.

The cell’s GPS took me far up a winding road to a parking lot that overlooked the city. Ghost and I got out. I drew my SIG Sauer and scanned the area. Darkness on all sides save for straight ahead, which was a sprawling view of house lights, car lights, and streetlights struggling to be seen through the fog.

Just one light pole here: and on it, a small closed-circuit camera. That was how MindReader had seen the Orc Brothers. Two immediate thoughts: one, MindReader was some seriously frightening Big Brother stuff; and, two, if this one little camera could spot the Orc Brothers and we had no other MindReader-based sightings of them in El Paso or anywhere else, Tres Hermanos Orco were very, very good at not being seen.

Ghost began to growl. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Ghost took a few steps from the car, body low, hackles raised — he was on point, nose aiming toward the dense shadows on the side of the parking lot.

I’d made a mistake: I had my SIG Sauer, I had my Wilson Rapid Response knife, but no body armor, no night vision, and no backup.

Ghost’s growl changed to a bark of challenge just as something — something big, too big to be a normal person — burst out of the woods.

I didn’t bother with questions: I started shooting. Seven rounds in less than a second, then the shadow turned and fled back into the woods.

Ghost went after it. I’d just started to give the stay command when I heard a horrible crunch of metal and breaking glass, and something hit me so hard it threw me through the air.

Half-stunned, I slid across the pavement, shredding both my shirt and the skin below it before I managed to roll to my knees. The Buick’s passenger side was caved in, a crater like a wrecking ball — an Orc Brother had hit the car so hard it smashed into me. And leaping over the Buick’s rear, lit up in the single streetlight, that same Hermano Orco — a big-ass, hunchbacked man wearing a camouflage raincoat.

Flat nose flaring, mouth open, two lower teeth sticking up like spikes of bone, he rushed me. I emptied my magazine. I capped off the last round from not even a foot away. It should have blown his heart straight out his back, dropped him like a bag of concrete — the fact that he didn’t even slow scrambled my thoughts for a moment, long enough for his huge fist to deliver a crushing body blow.

I felt ribs snap. The blow lifted me off my feet, threw me back, sent me tumbling across the pavement. I rolled to my feet for the second time, trying to brace for the pain, compensate for it, but no matter how tough you are broken ribs jam up the way you move.

The Orc Brother came straight in — hunchbacked, shoulders wide as a door, a steamroller with a raincoat trailing like a supervillain’s cape.

Knowing how bad the move would hurt, I feinted right, then stepped wide left. Orc matched the feint, but when he corrected, it was too late — I was already outside his right shoulder, my right hand driving my knife up into his chest. The point slid home just below his sternum; I had a flash of satisfaction that I’d pierced his heart just before his momentum slammed into my arm and shoulder, spinning me around, tearing the knife from my grasp.

I landed on my broken ribs. What air I had left in my lungs took a fast exit. I couldn’t tell if one of those lungs was punctured. If so, I still had a good chance of living longer than the asshole I’d just stabbed.

My enemy was down. Still rolling around a bit — it might take him a few minutes to die.

“Fuck you,” I said through clenched teeth.

And then, the asshole got up.

He stood slowly, but he stood. The knife was still sticking out of his chest. With one gray hand, he gripped the handle and pulled it free. Blood spurted once, twice… then stopped.

“No,” the Orc Brother said in a voice that — like his body, like his face — wasn’t quite human. “Fuck you.”

He smiled, staggered toward me, his balance becoming more sure with each step.

I had shot this prick at least five times at close range.

I had stabbed him in the goddamn heart.

And he was still coming.

A flash of white: Ghost jumping between me and the Orc Brother, fur raised, lip curled back to show wet teeth, a low growl gurgling in his throat.

A second flash of white — white with black spots. It was Emma, Erickson’s dog, at Ghost’s side, the two of them barking madly. Smaller than Ghost, but equal in projected ferocity.

The combined canine warning made the Orc Brother stop. Maybe he’d have come right at Ghost, but the pair gave him pause.

“I hate dogs,” he said. “Gonna kill your dogs. Gonna eat ’em while you watch, then gonna eat you.”

Fantastic.

I struggled to my feet, one hand holding my ribs. No weapon — I had to find a way to stop this bastard.

A hiss of air slipping past my right ear.

A thunk.

The Orc Brother looked down at the arrow shaft sticking out of his chest. He seemed confused.

“Burns,” he said. “Never burned before.”

A voice from behind me: “Welcome back to San Francisco, shitbird.”

The Orc Brother fell to his ass, still staring at the arrow shaft.

I recognized that voice: Jebediah “Bryan” Erickson. Whoever the hell he really was. I turned, expecting to see that pale face with the red stubble, the same black hair. Instead, I saw a man wearing a black navy pea coat, black jeans, black gloves, black skullcap with a black mask dangling from it — eyeholes and death grin poorly stitched in white. He held a black carbon fiber compound bow.

This circus sideshow had just jumped up to a full-on freak exhibit. What the hell was all this?

“You’ve got good moves, but the wrong weapon,” he said. “If the other two assholes come, use this. Stick it where it counts, leave it in.”

He handed me a sheathed KA-BAR. I took it.

“Watch my dog for me,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

He stepped between Ghost and Emma. Bryan/Jeb pulled an identical KA-BAR from inside his pea coat. Black anodized blade. Only the edge caught the glow of the single streetlight.

The Orc Brother saw him coming. For the first time, I saw fear in the monster’s eyes.

“No,” the monster said in that inhuman voice. “No, not you!”

The man in black closed the distance. He kicked out a booted foot so fast I didn’t see it move, just saw the Orc’s head snap back, one long tooth spinning into the night.

Bryan/Erickson grabbed the Orc by the throat. He stabbed the long blade into the Orc’s left eye, so deep I heard the tip hit the inside of the skull.

The dark wood rang with a sudden howl of anguish, a pair of inhuman voices combined into one. The trees at the edge of the parking lot erupted — the other two Orc Brothers came at us.

One rushed the man in black, one rushed me. Both screamed nonsensical words of hate, or revenge.

Ten meters from me. Broken ribs. A bulletproof foe, or at least one that bullets didn’t bother. I’d already stabbed his brother in the heart, to no effect.

Seven meters.

Stick it where it counts, leave it in.

Five.

I gave Ghost a hand signal: hamstring.

Ghost sprinted wide of the oncoming enemy, then turned sharply and bit at the back of his ankle. Canine fangs punctured cloth and leather.

At two meters, the Orc Brother turned to swipe at Ghost, but his forward momentum brought him stumbling straight at me.

Putting the KA-BAR in his throat was almost too easy.

I felt the blade scrape cervical vertebrae, and then the huge man — what, maybe 140 kilos? — fell past me. I let the knife go.

The Orc Brother hit the pavement. Blood sprayed everywhere, blackish red in the single light, but unlike when I’d stabbed his brother’s heart this blood didn’t stop spurting.

Not for another ten or fifteen seconds. Not until there wasn’t enough blood left to spurt.

I heard the sound of fists smashing into flesh, the cracking of bone. I turned to see the man in black straddling a prone Orc Brother, raining down blow after blow. Each time he pulled back a fist, it trailed an arc of blood.

I thought of the movie Rocky, of Sly Stallone hitting that side of beef over and over again. Finally, Bryan/Erickson stood. Emma ran to him, tail wagging, tongue lolling as if this were nothing more than a walk at the beach.

The man in black looked at me. “Ledger, you all right?”

I nodded toward my fallen foe. “Better than him.”

Bryan/Erickson pulled a rag — black, of course — from an inside pocket. He wiped blood, bits of bone, and, probably, chunks of brain from his leather gloves.

“Why didn’t my bullets kill the first one?” I asked. “Or my knife? Why did your knife work?”

“Ancient Chinese secret.”

He came closer.

“You owe me,” he said. “Let me hear you say it.”

I glanced around at the carnage, but didn’t need to — he was right. If he hadn’t shown up, I’d be dead. Probably Ghost as well.

“I owe you,” I said.

“Give me your word,” he said. “You don’t talk about this, to anyone. Do that and we’re even.”

I thought about what he’d told me at the big Victorian house: “This is San Francisco — things are different here.” A quiet little war, but this guy, this man in a psycho mask… we were on the same side.

“You have my word,” I said. “You look like the kind of guy who doesn’t appreciate publicity. Want me to make these bodies go away?”

He shook his head. The skull smile mask swayed slightly.

“The bodies are mine,” he said.

He moved quickly, carrying each Orc Brother body into the dark woods. The way he picked them up, as though they weighed little more than a bag of flour… this guy had serious strength.

Inhuman strength.

Enough to make me wonder if he had that Z chromosome, and what it meant.

He walked back to me.

“What, exactly, are you doing with those bodies?”

“Bringing a truck, taking them to my basement.”

His basement. Of course. I wanted the hell out of San Francisco.

“Need a ride?” he asked. “Hospital, maybe?”

“I’ve got it covered. Did you walk here?”

I’d almost said, Did you fly here, as if he were some kind of X-Men mutant, but caught myself at the last second.

He pointed to the edge of the parking lot, close to the winding road. There sat what looked like a sci-fi version of a Harley.

“That an electric motorcycle?”

The masked man nodded. “Yup.”

“With a sidecar, for your dog?”

“Yup.”

“Might have to get me one of those.”

“You owe Pookie a car first.”

True enough.

His eyes narrowed with anger, but not directed at me.

“Emma! Stop sniffing that poor dog’s ass!”

Sure enough, the dog had her nose jammed into Ghost’s butt. Ghost had that worried look on his face again.

“Emma!”

The pointer reluctantly ran to the sidecar and hopped in.

“Listen,” I said, “I have resources. Whatever is happening here, if it gets out of hand, you can call me.”

He thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

“Fair enough. And if you have targets in SF again, I’m your huckleberry.”

I offered my hand. He shook, and that was that. Two warriors, blindly trusting each other based on nothing more than a two-minute skirmish that had left three enemy combatants dead.

In my world? Sometimes, that’s enough.

He drove off in his motorcycle, which didn’t make a sound. No wonder I hadn’t heard him come in. I watched the man in black, whoever he was, fade into the night.

A wet nose nudged my hand. Ghost, asking to be petted. As I scratched his big head, I called Mr. Church.

“Joe, you okay?”

“Call off Kraken Team,” I said. “The Orc Brothers are neutralized.”

“Excellent news.”

“Get an ambulance to my location, stat. Keep it quiet.”

“You going to tell me what happened?”

“Can’t,” I said. “I gave my word. And don’t call me until I return — I’m on fucking vacation.”

This time, I got to hang up on him.

Ghost and I walked to the edge of the overlook. Together, just a man and his dog, we stared out at the foggy night and waited for the ambulance.

Number one New York Times bestselling author Scott Sigler is the creator of fifteen novels, six novellas, and dozens of short stories. His works are available from Crown Publishing and Del Rey Books. In 2005, Scott built a large online following by releasing his audiobooks as serialized podcasts. A decade later, he still gives his stories away — for free — every Sunday at www.scottsigler.com. His loyal fans, who named themselves “Junkies,” have downloaded more than forty million individual episodes. He has been covered in Time, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, Io9, Wired, the Huffington Post, BusinessWeek, and Fangoria. Scott is the co-founder of Empty Set Entertainment, which publishes his Galactic Football League YA series. He lives in San Diego, California, with his wee little dog, Reesie.